As part of my shopping for any new electronic device, I check the Device Upgrades in the file section to make sure that discrete IR codes are available. For a TV, discrete On/Off and input selection is a must. So I just purchased a LG HDTV because, among other things, I did see what I wanted in the upgrade file. In the user manual, I was very surprised to see the fourth Appendix named “IR Codes”. It documents both the codes transmitted by the supplied remote and the discrete codes that are available, but not on the remote.

Of all the people who buy one of the many TVs covered by this manual, how many actually read the manual (supplied on CD, not paper), read all the way to page 118 of 136, and have a clue what those hexadecimal codes mean? I suspect it is a very small percentage. Yet being in that small percentage, I really appreciate the documentation they supply.

If all manufacturers would A) support discrete cods and B) document those discrete codes. I would be much happier with some of my past purchases (before I included support of discrete codes as part of my shopping criteria.)

I saw a LG manual recently in which the IR codes for each function were listed. But oddly enough, I couldn't find anything about the protocol name or device number! So my guess is that most people do ignore this, and the ones who can benefit already know or find out that the protocol is NEC1 with device 4.

The manual also said the IR signal is modulated at 455KHz, which seems to suggest some confusion between RF and IR.

I saw a LG manual recently in which the IR codes for each function were listed. But oddly enough, I couldn't find anything about the protocol name or device number! So my guess is that most people do ignore this, and the ones who can benefit already know or find out that the protocol is NEC1 with device 4.

The manual also said the IR signal is modulated at 455KHz, which seems to suggest some confusion between RF and IR.

Actually there is some B&O equipment that does IR at 455KHz. Some attribute this to a desire to avoid interference from CFLs and Plasma TVs in the usual 35-40KHz band.

455KHz is something of a special frequency in that it is the standard IF frequency for AM radios the world over. So, there are a lot of resonators available at that frequency and so they're especially cheap compared to other frequencies. I seem to recall finding a 455KHz resonator in a remote for an old Hitachi TV. It wasn't used to transmit IR at 455KHz, but rather it was the clock source for the IC that generated run of the mill 38KHz IR. I don't know if that had anything to do with B&O picking that frequency or not, but it's quite a coincidence if not.

In any case, I'm a bit skeptical that an LG TV would really be using 455KHz IR.

Yes, I understand all that. LG TVs use IR NEC1 protocol which is 38KHz. but some of their RF remotes use 455KHz.

I'm surprised that a mfgr would pick 455KHz for an RF remote, as that frequency range is horrible from an interference standpoint. Any AM radio will radiate at it's 455KHz IF creating interference for the remote receiver and the remote transmitter will be creating interference for every AM radio in the vicinity too.

RF remotes that I've seen, typically operate in the 300-400 MHz band.

Still, it's nice that LG made an effort to tell us about the discrete codes, even if they got the frequency wrong.

Download RemoteMaster 1.97 (link in software forum.) Install it. Start the program, and on the Setup tab, select your remote, select NEC1 protocol, enter 4 as the Device number. Leave Subdevice and Parm blank. On the Functions tab, enter the numbers from the LG manual into the column labeled OBC. Then look at the EFC5 column-- that's your EFC.

The codes listed in the LG manuals are in hexadecimal (base 16) format. That means the digits run from 0 to F, where A follows 9. You can use the Windows calculator to convert from hexadecimal to decimal (the normal base 10) notation, or you can just multiply the left digit by 16 (noting that B, for example means 11 in decimal), and adding the value of the right digit.

For example the hexa code BF (Component 1 input) can be converted to decimal 11*16+15=191. So you would enter 191 into the OBC column.

The Windows calculator can be reached in a number of ways. One way is to Start/Run and enter calc into the Run window. In Vista that's Start/Search. Click on View and select Scientific to enable hexadecimal or decimal entry and conversion.

It's not hard. In fact most of my previous post related to hexadecimal to decimal conversion, and that's not usually necessary. For example, the necessary information to get the EFCs for your LG DVD recorder mentioned in another thread is already in that thread in decimal format. You can probably get this going in the same amount of time that it took me to write my previous post.

what if my only pc is my work laptop and i do not have the necessary admin rights to install software? what do i do now?_________________Rogers Digital Personal TV
LG 42" LCD HDTV
LG Blue-Ray HD Player
Rogers 4250 HD Box

If someone has some time on their hands, it would be nice if they could pull together a master sheet of all the LG TV OBC upgrade values. While my booklet has a lot of the discretes, a lot of the codes from the upgrades are not listed. For example Subtitles, OBC 57 wasn't found anywhere on the net, but I found it in one of the upgrades. It sure is easier to pull the options open already geared to the captions, instead of trying to guess at that little wheel, which one is the closed captioning....